[Peace-discuss] Max Blumenthal: How Israeli Occupation Forces, Bahraini Monarchy Guards Trained U.S. Police For Coordinated Crackdown On "Occupy" Protests

Sat May 23 09:11:40 EDT 2015

<http://exiledonline.com/max-blumenthal-how-israeli-occupation-forces-bahrai
ni-monarchy-guards-trained-u-s-police-for-coordinated-crackdown-on-occupy-pr
otests/> Max Blumenthal: How Israeli Occupation Forces, Bahraini Monarchy
Guards Trained U.S. Police For Coordinated Crackdown On Occupy Protests 

By  <http://exiledonline.com/?s=Max%20Blumenthal> Max Blumenthal 

New York  In October, the Alameda County Sheriffs Department turned parts
of the campus of the University of California in Berkeley into an urban
battlefield. The occasion was
<http://www.urbanshield.org/index.php/about/swat> Urban Shield 2011, an
annual SWAT team exposition organized to promote mutual response,
collaboration and competition between heavily militarized police strike
forces representing law enforcement departments across the United States and
foreign nations.

At the time, the Alameda County Sheriffs Department was preparing for an
imminent confrontation with the nascent Occupy movement that had set up
camp in downtown Oakland, and would demonstrate the brunt of its repressive
capacity against the demonstrators a month later when it
<http://english.al-akhbar.com/blogs/gadfly/arms-firm-behind-suppression-occu
pyoakland-and-palestines-popular-struggle> attacked the encampment with
teargas and rubber bullet rounds, leaving an Iraq war veteran in
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/30/scott-olsen-ed-schultz-occupy-oakl
and-msnbc_n_1120302.html> critical condition and dozens injured. According
to
<http://www.policemag.com/Blog/SWAT/Story/2011/11/Urban-Shield-2011-Behind-t
he-Scenes.aspx> Police Magazine, a law enforcement trade publication, Law
enforcement agencies responding to
Occupy protesters in northern California
credit Urban Shield for their effective teamwork.

Training alongside the American police departments at Urban Shield was the
<http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=1676> Yamam, an
Israeli Border Police unit that claims to specialize in counter-terror
operations but is better known for its  <http://www.imemc.org/article/6644>
extra-judicial assassinations of Palestinian militant leaders and long
record of  <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRPPN7Kmi1c> repression and
<http://articles.latimes.com/2004/sep/29/world/fg-mideast29> abuses in the
occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Urban Shield also featured a unit from
the military of Bahrain, which had just crushed a largely non-violent
democratic uprising by
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/bahrain/8329930/Bahrai
n-riot-police-fire-on-protest-camp.html> opening fire on protest camps and
<http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2692740.html> arresting wounded
demonstrators when they attempted to enter hospitals. While the involvement
of Bahraini soldiers in the drills was a novel phenomenon, the presence of
quasi-military Israeli police  whose participation in Urban Shield was not
reported anywhere in US media  reflected a disturbing but all-too-common
feature of the post-9/11 American security landscape.

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The Israelification of Americas security apparatus, recently unleashed in
full force against the Occupy Wall Street Movement, has taken place at every
level of law enforcement, and in areas that have yet to be exposed. The
phenomenon has been documented in bits and pieces, through occasional news
reports that typically highlight Israels national security prowess without
examining the problematic nature of working with a country accused of grave
human rights abuses. But it has never been the subject of a national
discussion. And collaboration between American and Israeli cops is just the
tip of the iceberg.

Having been schooled in Israeli tactics perfected during a 63 year
experience of controlling, dispossessing, and occupying an indigenous
population, local police forces have adapted them to monitor Muslim and
immigrant neighborhoods in US cities. Meanwhile, former Israeli military
officers have been hired to spearhead security operations at American
airports and suburban shopping malls, leading to a wave of disturbing
incidents of racial profiling, intimidation, and FBI interrogations of
innocent, unsuspecting people. The New York Police Departments disclosure
that it deployed counter-terror measures against Occupy protesters
encamped in downtown Manhattans Zuccotti Park is just the latest example of
the so-called War on Terror creeping into every day life. Revelations like
these have raised serious questions about the extent to which
Israeli-inspired tactics are being used to suppress the Occupy movement.

The process of Israelification began in the immediate wake of 9/11, when
national panic led federal and municipal law enforcement officials to
beseech Israeli security honchos for advice and training. Americas Israel
lobby exploited the climate of hysteria, providing thousands of top cops
with all-expenses paid trips to Israel and stateside training sessions with
Israeli military and intelligence officials. By now, police chiefs of major
American cities who have not been on junkets to Israel are the exception.

Israel is the Harvard of antiterrorism,
<http://www.jinsa.org/events-programs/law-enforcement-exchange-program-leep/
leep-news/israeli-experts-teach-police-terrori> said former US Capitol
Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer, who now serves as the US Senate
Sergeant-at-Arms. Cathy Lanier, the Chief of the Washington DC Metropolitan
Police,
<http://www.jinsa.org/events-programs/law-enforcement-exchange-program-leep/
leep-news/israeli-experts-teach-police-terrori> remarked, No experience in
my life has had more of an impact on doing my job than going to Israel.
One would say it is the front line, Barnett Jones, the police chief of Ann
Arbor, Michigan,
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/25/national/nationalspecial3/25bombings.html
?ex=1279> said of Israel. Were in a global war.

 <http://law.fordham.edu/faculty/karenjgreenberg.htm> Karen Greenberg, the
director of Fordham School of Laws Center on National Security and a
leading expert on terror and civil liberties, said the Israeli influence on
American law enforcement is so extensive it has bled into street-level
police conduct. After 9/11 we reached out to the Israelis on many fronts
and one of those fronts was torture, Greenberg told me. The training in
Iraq and Afghanistan on torture was Israeli training. Theres been a huge
downside to taking our cue from the Israelis and now were going to spread
that into the fabric of everyday American life? Its counter-terrorism
creep. And its exactly what you could have predicted would have happened.

Changing the way we do business

The
<http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Jewish_Institute_for_National_Se
curity_Affairs> Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) is at
the heart of American-Israeli law enforcement collaboration. JINSA is a
Jerusalem and Washington DC-based think tank known for stridently
neoconservative policy positions on Israels policy towards the Palestinians
and its brinkmanship with Iran. The groups board of directors boasts a
Whos Who of neocon ideologues. Two
<http://www.thenation.com/article/men-jinsa-and-csp> former JINSA advisors
who have also consulted for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
Douglas Feith and Richard Perle, went on to serve in the Department of
Defense under President George W. Bush, playing influential roles in the
push to invade and occupy Iraq.

Through its
<http://www.jinsa.org/events-programs/law-enforcement-exchange-program-leep/
all> Law Enforcement Education Program (LEEP), JINSA claims to have arranged
Israeli-led training sessions for over 9000 American law enforcement
officials at the federal, state and municipal level. The Israelis changed
the way we do business regarding homeland security in New Jersey, Richard
Fuentes, the NJ State Police Superintendent,
<http://www.jinsa.org/events-programs/law-enforcement-exchange-program-leep/
jinsas-2004-counter-terror-conference-new-jers> said after attending a 2004
JINSA-sponsored Israel trip and a subsequent JINSA conference alongside 435
other law enforcement officers.

During a 2004
<http://www.jinsa.org/events-programs/law-enforcement-exchange-program-leep/
top-cops-return-jinsa-sponsored-anti-terror-st> LEEP trip, JINSA brought 14
senior American law enforcement officials to Israel to receive instruction
from their counterparts. The Americans were trained in how to secure large
venues, such as shopping malls, sporting events and concerts, JINSAs
website reported. Escorted by Brigadier General Simon Perry, an Israeli
police attaché and former Mossad official, the group toured the Israeli
separation wall, now a mandatory stop for American cops on junkets to
Israel. American officials learned about the mindset of a suicide bomber
and how to spot trouble signs, according to JINSA. And they were schooled
in Israeli killing methods. Although the police are typically told to aim
for the chest when shooting because it is the largest target, the Israelis
are teaching [American] officers to aim for a suspects head so as not to
detonate any explosives that might be strapped to his torso, the New York
Times
<http://www.jinsa.org/events-programs/law-enforcement-exchange-program-leep/
leep-news/suicide-bombings-bring-urgency-polic> reported.

Cathy Lanier, now the Chief of Washington DCs Metropolitan Police
Department, was among the law enforcement officials junketed to Israel by
JINSA. I was with the bomb units and the SWAT team and all of those high
profile specialized [Israeli] units and I learned a tremendous amount,
Lanier  <http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Lani> reflected. I took 82
pages of notes while I was there which I later brought back and used to
formulate a lot of what I later used to create and formulate the Homeland
Security terrorism bureau in the DC Metropolitan Police department.

Some of the police chiefs who have taken part in JINSAs LEEP program have
done so under the auspices of the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), a
private non-governmental group with close ties to the Department of Homeland
Security. Chuck Wexler, the executive director of PERF, was so enthusiastic
about the program that by 2005 he had begun
<http://www.jinsa.org/events-programs/law-enforcement-exchange-program-leep/
leep-news/israeli-experts-teach-police-terrori> organizing trips to Israel
sponsored by PERF, bringing numerous high-level American police officials to
receive instruction from their Israeli counterparts.

PERF gained notoriety when Wexler
<http://www.democracynow.org/seo/2011/11/17/paramilitary_policing_of_occupy_
wall_street> confirmed that his group coordinated police raids in 16 cities
across America against Occupy protest encampments. As many as 40 cities
have
<http://www.sfbg.com/politics/2011/11/18/cop-group-coordinating-occupy-crack
downs> sought PERF advice on suppressing the Occupy movement and other
mass protest activities. Wexler did not respond to my requests for an
interview.

Lessons from Israel to Auschwitz

Besides JINSA, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has positioned itself as an
important liaison between American police forces and the Israeli
security-intelligence apparatus. Though the ADL promotes itself as a Jewish
civil rights group, it has
<http://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/blog/daily-beast-adls-shameful-smear-campaig
n> provoked controversy by publishing a blacklist of organizations
supporting Palestinian rights, and for condemning a proposal to construct an
Islamic community center in downtown New York, several blocks from Ground
Zero, on the basis that some opponents of the project were entitled to
positions that others would characterize as irrational or bigoted.

Through the ADLs
<http://www.adl.org/learn/adl_law_enforcement/911_adl_law_enforcement.htm?LE
ARN_Cat=Training&LEARN_SubCat=Training_News> Advanced Training School course
on Extremist and Terrorist Threats, over 700 law enforcement personnel from
220 federal and local agencies including the FBI and CIA have been trained
by Israeli police and intelligence commanders. This year, the ADL brought 15
high-level American police officials to Israel for instruction from the
countrys security apparatus. According to the ADL, over 115 federal, state
and local law enforcement executives have undergone ADL-organized training
sessions in Israel since the program began in 2003. I can honestly say that
the training offered by ADL is by far the most useful and current training
course I have ever attended, Deputy Commissioner Thomas Wright of the
Philadelphia Police Department
<http://www.adl.org/NR/exeres/B901D4FC-1EA8-4AC8-B354-CF600C48E8ED,3EE9C1C0-
EA4B-47AF-832A-92A26F3DE2FB,frameless.htm> commented after completing an ADL
program this year. The ADLs relationship with the Washington DC Police
Department is so cozy its members are invited to accompany DC cops on ride
along patrols.

The ADL claims to have trained over 45,000 American law enforcement
officials through its
<http://www.adl.org/learn/adl_law_enforcement/LEAS+3-09.htm?LEARN_Cat=Traini
ng&LEARN_SubCat=Training_News> Law Enforcement and Society program, which
draws on the history of the Holocaust to provide law enforcement
professionals with an increased understanding of
their role as protectors of
the Constitution, the groups website stated. All new FBI agents and
intelligence analysts are required to attend the ADL program, which is
incorporated into three FBI training programs. According to official
<http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/facts-and-figures-2010-2011/
working-for-the-fbi> FBI recruitment material, all new special agents must
visit the US Holocaust Memorial Museum to see firsthand what can happen when
law enforcement fails to protect individuals.

Fighting crimiterror

Among the most prominent Israeli government figure to have influenced the
practices of American law enforcement officials is
<http://ccrjustice.org/learn-more/faqs/case-against-avi-dichter> Avi
Dichter, a former head of Israels Shin Bet internal security service and
current member of Knesset who recently introduced legislation widely
criticized as
<http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/dichter-replaces-jewish-identity-
bill-with-equally-contentious-draft-law-1.395591> anti-democratic. During
the Second Intifada, Dichter ordered several bombings on densely populated
Palestinian civilian areas, including one on the al-Daraj neighborhood of
Gaza that resulted in the death of 15 innocent people, including 8 children,
and 150 injuries. After each success, the only thought is, Okay, whos
next? Dichter said of the targeted assassinations he has ordered.

Despite his dubious human rights record and apparently dim view of
democratic values, or perhaps because of them, Dichter has been a key figure
in fostering cooperation between Israeli security forces and American law
enforcement. In 2006, while Dichter was serving at the time as Israels
Minister of Public Security, he spoke in Boston, Massachusetts before the
annual convention of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
Seated beside FBI Director Robert Mueller and then-Attorney General Alberto
Gonzalez, Dichter told the 10,000 police officers in the crowd that there
was an intimate connection between fighting criminals and fighting
terrorists. Dichter  <http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=38214>
declared that American cops were actually fighting crimiterrorists. The
Jerusalem Post reported that Dichter was greeted by a hail of applause, as
he was hugged by Mueller, who described Dichter as his mentor in anti-terror
tactics.

A year after Dichters speech, he and then-Secretary of the Department of
Homeland Security Michael Chertoff
<http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=50769> signed a joint
memorandum pledging security collaboration between America and Israel on
issues ranging from airport security to emergency planning. In 2010,
Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano
<http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/pr_1267540088589.shtm> authorized a new
joint memorandum with Israeli Transport and Road Safety Minister Israel Katz
shoring up cooperation between the US Transportation Security Agency  the
agency in charge of day-to-day airport security  and Israels Security
Department. The recent joint memorandum also consolidated the presence of US
Homeland Security law enforcement personnel on Israeli soil. The bond
between the United States and Israel has never been stronger, Napolitano
<http://www.aipac.org/NearEastReport/20111113/NER_AIPAC_Arizona.html>
remarked at a recent summit of AIPAC, the leading outfit of Americas Israel
lobby, in Scottsdale, Arizona.

The Demographic Unit

For the New York Police Department, collaboration with Israels security and
intelligence apparatus became a top priority after 9/11. Just months after
the attacks on New York City, the NYPD assigned a permanent, taxpayer-funded
<http://www.nycpolicefoundation.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=322> liaison
officerto Tel Aviv. Under the leadership of Police Commissioner Ray Kelly,
ties between the NYPD and Israel have deepened by the day. Kelly embarked on
his  <http://www.mathaba.net/news/?x=614690?related> first trip to Israel in
early 2009 to demonstrate his support for Israels ongoing assault on the
Gaza Strip, a one-sided attack that left over 1400 Gaza residents dead in
three weeks and led a United Nations fact-finding mission to conclude that
Israeli military and government officials had committed war crimes.

Kelly returned to Israel the following year to
<http://www.5tjt.com/international-news/128-ray-kelly-highlights-special-rel
ationship-between-nypd-and-israel> speak at the Herziliya Conference, an
annual gathering of neoconservative security and government officials who
obsess over supposed demographic threats. After Kelly appeared on stage,
the Herziliya crowd was addressed by the pro-Israel academic Martin Kramer,
who
<http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2010/02/22/martin-kramer-spout
s-anti-muslim-racism-at-prestigious-herzliya-conference/> claimed that
Israels blockade of Gaza was helping to reduce the numbers of superfluous
young men of fighting age. Kramer added, If a state cant control these
young men, then someone else will.

Back in New York, the NYPD set up a secret
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/24/nypd-cia-terrorism_n_934923.html>
Demographics Unit designed to spy on and monitor Muslim communities around
the city. The unit was developed with input and intensive involvement by the
CIA, which still refuses to name the former Middle East station chief it has
posted in the senior ranks of the NYPDs intelligence division. Since 2002,
the NYPD has dispatched undercover agents known as rakers and mosque
crawlers into Pakistani-American bookstores and restaurants to gauge
community anger over US drone strikes inside Pakistan, and into Palestinian
hookah bars and mosques to search out signs of terror recruitment and
clandestine funding. If a raker noticed a customer looking at radical
literature, he might chat up the store owner and see what he could learn,
the Associated Press reported. The bookstore, or even the customer, might
get further scrutiny.

The Israeli imprimatur on the NYPDs Demographics Unit is unmistakable. As a
former police official told the Associated Press, the Demographics Unit has
attempted to map the citys human terrain through a program modeled in
part on how Israeli authorities operate in the West Bank.

Shop til youre stopped

At Israels Ben Gurion International Airport, security personnel target
non-Jewish and non-white passengers, especially Arabs, as a matter of
policy. The most routinely harassed passengers are Palestinian citizens of
Israel, who must
<http://972mag.com/my-regular-confrontation-with-discrimination-at-ben-gurio
n-airport/12452/> brace themselvesfor five-hour interrogation sessions and
strip searches before flying. Those singled out for extra screening by Shin
Bet officers are sent to what many Palestinians from Israel call the Arab
room, where they are subjected to humiliating questioning sessions (former
White House Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala encountered
such
<http://palestinenote.com/blogs/news/archive/2010/08/06/us-vip-says-hassled-
at-israel-airport-for-arab-last-name.aspx> mistreatment during a visit to
Israel last year). Some Palestinians are forbidden from speaking to anyone
until takeoff, and may be
<http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/el-al-ordered-to-compensate-humil
iated-israeli-arab-passengers-1.842> menaced by Israeli flight attendants
during the flight. In one documented case, a six-month-old was awoken for a
strip search by Israeli Shin Bet personnel. Instances of discrimination
against Arabs at Ben Gurion International are too numerous to detail 
several incidents occur each day  but a few of the more egregious instances
were outlined in a 2007
<http://972mag.com/airport-security-and-palestinian-arab-citizens-change-in-
sight/11896/> petition the Association for Civil Rights in Israel filed with
the countrys Supreme Court.

Though the Israeli system of airline security contains dubious benefits and
clearly deleterious implications for civil liberties, it is quietly and
rapidly migrating into major American airports. Security personnel at
Bostons Logan International Airport have undergone extensive
<http://radioboston.wbur.org/2011/08/16/security-logan-falls-short> training
from Israeli intelligence personnel, learning to apply profiling and
behavioral assessment techniques against American citizens that were
initially tested on Palestinians. The new procedures began in August, when
so-called Behavior Detection Officers were
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/17/us-security-airport-boston-idUSTR
E77G5SZ20110817> placed in security queues at Logans heavily trafficked
Terminal A. Though the procedures have added to traveler stress while
netting exactly zero terrorists, they are likely to spread to other cities.
I would like to see a lot more profiling in American airports,
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/16/AR201012160
6216_pf.html> said Yossi Sheffi, an Israeli-born risk analyst at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Transportation and
Logistics.

Israeli techniques now dictate security procedures at the Mall of America, a
gargantuan shopping mall in Bloomington, Minnesota that has become a major
tourist attraction. The new methods took hold in 2005 when the mall hired a
former Israeli army sergeant named Mike Rozin to lead a special new security
unit. Rozin, who once worked with a canine unit at Ben Gurion Airport in
Israel, instructed his employees at the Mall of America to visually profile
every shopper, examining their expressions for suspicious signs. His
security team
<http://americaswarwithin.org/articles/2011/09/07/mall-america-visitors-unkn
owingly-end-counterterrorism-reports> accosts and interrogates an average of
1200 shoppers a year, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting.

One of the thousands who fell into Rozins dragnet was Najam Qureshi, a
Pakistani-American mall vendor whose father accidentally left his cell phone
on a table in the mall food court. A day after the incident, FBI agents
appeared at Qureshis doorstep to ask if he knew anyone seeking to harm the
United States. An army veteran interrogated for two hours by Rozins men for
taking video inside the mall
<http://americaswarwithin.org/articles/2011/09/07/mall-america-visitors-unkn
owingly-end-counterterrorism-reports> sobbed openly about his experience to
reporters. Meanwhile, another man, Emile Khalil, was visited by FBI agents
after mall security stopped him for taking photographs of the dazzling
consumer haven.

I think that the threat of terrorism in the United States is going to
become an unfortunate part of American life, Rozin
<http://www.ajwnews.com/archives/8668> remarked to American Jewish World.
And as long as the threat persists in the publics mind, Israeli
securitocrats like Rozin will never have to worry about the next paycheck.

Occupy meets the Occupation

When a riot squad from the New York Police Department destroyed and evicted
the Occupy Wall Street protest encampment at Zuccotti Park in downtown
Manhattan, department leadership drew on the anti-terror tactics they had
refined since the 9/11 attacks. According to the New York Times, the NYPD
<http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=868084&f=19&p=0> deployed
counterterrorism measures to mobilize large numbers of cops for the
lightning raid on Zuccotti. The use of anti-terror techniques to suppress a
civilian protest complemented harsh police measures demonstrated across the
country against the nationwide Occupy movement, from firing tear gas
canisters and rubber bullets into unarmed crowds to blasting demonstrators
with the
<http://english.al-akhbar.com/blogs/gadfly/tested-palestinians-perfected-ows
-protesters-introducing-lrad-sound-cannon> LRAD sound cannon.

Given the amount of training the NYPD and so many other police forces have
received from Israels military-intelligence apparatus, and the profuse
levels of gratitude American police chiefs have expressed to their Israeli
mentors, it is worth asking how much Israeli instruction has influenced the
way the police have attempted to suppress the Occupy movement, and how much
it will inform police repression of future upsurges of street protest. But
already, the Israelification of American law enforcement appears to have
intensified police hostility towards the civilian population, blurring the
lines between protesters, common criminals, and terrorists. As Dichter said,
they are all just crimiterrorists.

After 9/11 we had to react very quickly, Greenberg remarked, but now
were in 2011 and were not talking about people who want to fly planes into
buildings. Were talking about young American citizens who feel that their
birthright has been sold. If were using Israeli style tactics on them and
this stuff bleeds into the way we do business at large, were in big
trouble.

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